He had said all this with an effort at lightness, and ended, as he had begun, with a smile. Kate, looking intently into his face, did not smile in response. He thought her expression was one of disappointment. “Perhaps I was wrong to ask you,” she answered, after a little pause, and in a colder tone. “You men do stand by each other so splendidly. It is the secret of your strength. It is why your sex possesses the earth, and the fulness thereof.” It was easier for Reuben to smile naturally this time. “But I illustrated my position by an example of a still finer reticence,” he said; “the finest one can imagine--that of husband and wife.” “You are not married, I believe, Mr. Tracy,” was her comment, and its edge was apparent. “No,” he said, and stopped short. No other words came to his tongue, and his thoughts seemed to have gone away into somebody else’s mind, leaving only a formless blank, over which hung, like a canopy of cloud, a depressing uneasiness lest his visit should not, after all, turn out a success. “Then you think I have needlessly worried myself,” she was saying when he came back into mental life again. “Not altogether that, either,” he replied, moving in his seat, and sitting upright like a man who has shaken himself out of a disposition to doze. “So far as you have described them, the transactions may easily be all right. Everything depends upon details which you cannot give. The sum seems a large one to raise for the purchase of machinery, and it might be well to inquire into the exact nature and validity of the purchase. As for the terms upon which you lend the money to the company, of course Mr. Boyce has secured those. In the matter of the trust, I cannot speak at all. The idea is hateful to me, personally. All such combinations excite my anger. But as a business operation it may improve your property; always assuming that you are capably and fairly represented in the control of the trust. I suppose Mr. Boyce has attended to that.” “But don’t you see,” broke in the girl, “it is all Mr. Boyce! It is to be assumed that he will do this, to be taken for granted he will do that, to be hoped that he has done the other. _That_ is what I am anxious about. _Has_ he done these things? _Will_ he do them?” “And that, of course, is what I cannot tell you,” said Reuben. “How can I know?” “But you can find out.” The lawyer knitted his ordinarily placid brows for a moment in thought. Then he slowly shook his head. “I am afraid not,” he said, slowly. “I should be very angry if the railroad people, for example, set him to examining what I had done for them; angry with him, especially, for accepting such a commission.” “I am sorry, Mr. Tracy, if I seem to have proposed anything dishonorable to you,” Miss Kate responded, with added formality in voice and manner. “I did not mean to.”